Sarah Palin Feminism

By

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Updated Sept. 5, 2008 11:59 p.m. ET

When the news came out earlier this week that the family situation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a little more complicated than had originally been disclosed, pundits immediately began speculating whether social conservatives -- not least, evangelicals -- would stick with their woman. Surely a person who allowed her 17-year-old daughter to get pregnant while she was off running a state could not be the type of mother and female politician that conservatives go for.

ENLARGE

The Alaska governor with her daughter Piper.
Associated Press

The Daily Kos was filled with sarcastic remarks about the hypocrisy of the "family values" crowd. A poster to Slate noted: "I have been absolutely amazed at how quickly the Evangelicals abandoned some of their 'family values.' . . . What about stay-at-home motherhood?: Palin's candidacy is a direct assault on that Christian tradition." Daily Telegraph columnist Liz Hunt sneered: "Whose family values is she enthusiastic about? How can she reconcile such a high-profile job as 'veep' -- a 'heartbeat' away from leadership of the free world and all that -- with bringing up five children?"

The New York Times front page reported on the Palin flap: "It's the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition. But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her." And the Washington Post's Sally Quinn offered this: "Evangelical women also will have to decide if they will vote against their conscience by voting to put the mother of young children in a job outside the home that will demand so much of her time and energy."

There are certainly a few evangelicals who will think twice about Mrs. Palin's choices. But looking at the big picture, it seems that Ms. Quinn and her colleagues in the media are operating from an outdated picture of the evangelical community and its "values."

Most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace. A Pew survey released this summer, for instance, asked whether "women should return to their traditional roles in society." Twenty-two percent of all Americans agreed, compared with 32% of white born-again Protestants. That's not exactly a big difference. And younger evangelicals are even more likely to agree that women should have the opportunity to work outside the home.

Even 20 years ago, evangelicals showed a surprising willingness to accept new roles for women, beyond the traditional domestic ones. In 1988, James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, published a study called "Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation." He asked evangelicals whether they agree "that women should take care of running the home and leave the running of the country up to men." The media stereotype, then as well as now, would lead one to expect a very high percentage of agreeing respondents. But only 57% of older evangelicals agreed, compared with 33% of younger ones (ages 18-35). Both numbers have declined steadily ever since. In 2001, according to a UCLA survey, less than one-fifth of the freshman women at non-Catholic religious colleges -- more than half of whom said they were "born again Christian" -- agreed with this statement: "The activities of married women are best confined to the home and family."

And the goals that young evangelical women have set for themselves reflect this worldview. In 2007, only 0.3% of women at non-Catholic religious institutions said that their probable career was "full-time homemaker." There was also little difference between the goals of women at non-Catholic religious colleges and those at other schools when it came to pursuing advanced degrees. Surveys of college freshmen don't necessarily reflect perfectly the choices that young people will ultimately make, but they do give a sense of the values that they have learned at home. Evangelical families now seem to expect their daughters to have careers.

Which is not to say these young women don't place great importance on having a family. At secular schools 73% thought raising a family was very important, versus 80% at non-Catholic religious schools. Meanwhile, the percentage of women who said that being "very well off financially" was among their important objectives was also similar across the board -- 69% at secular schools and 63% at religious ones. These goals are seen as no more incompatible for religious women than they are for secular ones. In fact, religious women may have a better chance of "having it all" than their secular counterparts. Since they tend to get married and have children earlier in life, they are less likely, Mrs. Palin notwithstanding, to have to have to make difficult choices between highly demanding mid-career work and the needs of a young family.

The reasons for these developments are many, but perhaps the most salient one is that evangelicals are an increasingly educated and upwardly mobile population. Evangelical colleges have grown at a rapid pace in the past 20 years, and the ratios of women to men there are even higher than at secular colleges.

So have evangelicals accepted the sexual revolution? Yes and no. While they generally agree that women should have careers, evangelical women and men still have some traditional social views -- that sex should be reserved for marriage, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that the possibility of abortion on demand, far from being a key to women's happiness, is simply wrong. In other words, like most Americans, they have rejected the more radical elements of feminism. Another newsflash for the pundits, perhaps.

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